Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
Why we should not judge
“Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye. Mt 7,1-5
The reason why we cannot remove the mote from the eye of our brother is because we are not able to do so, due to the fact that the beam in our eye prevents us from seeing well enough. Out of the metaphor: our sin prevents us to evaluate with justice the sin of the others. This is much more than of an opinion: it is the teaching which we all need. The sin darkens the intellect and prevents it from the full understanding by the right way of the people and of the situations. We cannot see and understand the sin of our brother if we are not in communion with him to the point up to which we can know the reasons which have led to: the received talents and education, the mood, the level of faith, the circumstances and his needs. But this communion is prevented by our and his sinfulness. At the beginning of the times, after the fall of Adam and Eve: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves” (Gn 3,7). Our sin cuts off the communion with God and consequently with the brothers, preventing us from knowing the conditions which led to their sin. Even the intelligence, created by God to be in communion with him, is lit only if it remains in communion with him. In addition, we understand in a distorted way because the sin which we see in others is ours reflected in them: the thief sees all being thieves, the selfish all selfish and the liar all liars. The sin also prevents us from seeing, or does it to be underestimated, the evil which is in us. The non-communion with God, to see our sin reflected in others and the tendency not to consider it as such, constitute the beam which – the Lord says today – prevents us from seeing and being able to take out the mote in the eye of our brother.